Ask Why Five Times

If you’ve raised children, or been around a five-year-old, you know how curious they can be… asking why about everything.  It can be irritating to hear the incessant “whys,” especially after a long day working or a poor night’s sleep. But it’s actually a behavior that we want to cultivate.

In fact, in Junior High School, when I went to a religious school, I had a teacher who said if you ask “why?” 5 times, you’ll always get to God.

Last week here in New England, it snowed 6 inches… and some tree limbs broke. You might ask, why?

• Why is the tree branch on the ground? Because it broke.
• Why did it break? Because it was heavy.
• Why was it heavy? Because it snowed, and it still had leaves
• Why did it still have leaves? Because it was October.
• Why did it snow in October? Because… God.

For religious people, as I was taught in school, God is at the root of all. And if you ask “Why?” enough you’ll get there.  Whether or not you believe God is the root of all, asking “why?” several times, will often get you to the root, whatever it may be.

Too often, when we face challenges in our business, we ask “why?” only once, and solve for that.

Let me give you a covid-example:

When covid hit, every business owner experienced upheaval in some way:

• Sales spiked; or dropped. Farmers that sold direct to consumers saw huge increases in businesses, while those selling to restaurants saw their business evaporate overnight.
• Distribution shifted in ways we could never imagine. More people are relying on delivery. In person-sales shifted too.
• Operations modified to accommodate new safety protocols. And many farms struggle with labor because employees call-in sick at the first whiff of a cough (and rightly so! But makes staffing difficult) or because they now have childcare issues.

And we all adapted in ways big and small. How you adapted is largely dependent on how you defined the problem. And if you don’t dig deep enough, you may not have solved for the right problem.

• Why did your farm sales drop? Because restaurants closed.

If you stopped your questioning here, you might just try to pivot your sales channels to farmers markets or grocers. But if you keep asking why, you might get some place different.

• Why did restaurants close? Because restaurant sales dropped; people stopped eating out.
• Why? Because of covid.
• Why? Because people are too nervous to eat out.
• Why? Because of the fear of covid transmission.

The root cause is that people are nervous about covid transmission… so the issue isn’t that people stopped eating out; it’s that their nervous about covid and that likely would also impact shopping habits at farmers markets or grocery stores, as well.  And as we’ve seen, the shopping experience at farmers markets is wildly different than before, and sales are down there as well.

Asking “why” led us to a different place of problem solving… and the recognition that just shifting to a different sales channel (to farmers markets and grocers) may not be the best solution to the challenge because it doesn’t address the root cause.  Thinking about the root cause, you may consider retail delivery. Recognizing that families are eating out less, you might partner with restaurants to create meal kits.

I’ll give you another example.

Last year, I worked with a client who wanted to purchase a new, larger delivery truck. Of course, I asked,

• “why?” Because we’re maxed out each time we drive to the City to make deliveries. We can’t service more customers.

My client was about to borrow $25,000 to purchase a new truck. I was concerned that the potential return from increased sales would not be enough to cover the cost of the truck. So I asked “why?” a few more times.

• Why are you maxed out? Because we only drive into the city 2 times a week.
• Why do you only drive into town 2 times a week? Because we need our staff in the field harvesting. We don’t have enough labor.
• Why don’t you have enough labor? There are limited farmer workers in our community.
• Why do you have to hire a farm worker to do the driving? !!!!

By going through the process of asking “why?” we got ourselves to a different issue and an opportunity to come up with different solutions.

Different solutions include:

• Driving into the City more than twice a week
• Hiring a driver rather than a farm worker. This also expands the pool of potential job applicants.

What challenges are you trying to solve? I encourage you to keep asking “why?” and perhaps enlist the brain trust of your family and staff.  It’s a good exercise to practice, to see where asking “why?” might get you.

If you need help framing your challenges, drop me a line and we can set up a coaching session.